anarchistxx

Luckily we're past the workrate mentality that included wisdom like "chops=great tehnical wrestling" and pretended amount of moves used is a valid criteria to judge wrestlers on. Exactly! I'm fact a wrestler should be able to get bonus points for having a compelling match doing nothing but punches!!!! True, but someone should also get props for a match focused around body part work with lots of cool, varied offence working on a limb, not just taking a lazy approach to it and calling it minimalist. Less can be more, especially if you are a Jim Breaks who can make little things seem incredible...but nobody is telling me Kenta Kobashi would have been a better worker if he had ditched all the bombs and varied shit and had a tiny move set, relying on punch exchanges and personality to have great matches. Steve Austin vs Undertaker in 2001 is a prime example of a lazy, lazy match where they just work punch exchanges for twenty minutes. Give me dives and suplexes and bombs over that anyday, so long as they are put in smartly.

Everyone here has watched a Rock match, and most people here haven't seen many Maeda matches. That is probably the real reason. One guy was on TV and having big matches at the peak of wrestling's popularity. The other guy is a shoot style worker that you'd have to scour the internet to watch. It makes perfect sense to me. Although the counterpoint here is that because The Rock is so prominent, most people have seen all of his worst work from watching him week in week out, which can count against him. Whereas people who have seen Maeda are more likely to have focused mainly on the pimped stuff and not seen him at his worst.

Luckily we're past the workrate mentality that included wisdom like "chops=great tehnical wrestling" and pretended amount of moves used is a valid criteria to judge wrestlers on.Personally I still like that some people talk about 'limited movesets' because I take those 2 words as a code that means 'ignore everything I say about wrestling' Which makes you even more small minded than they are. Nothing wrong with wanting to see some cool shit. Doesn't mean you can't have a brilliant brawl mostly made up of punches and fantastic because of the hate, the story they tell, the facials etc. But there is also nothing wrong with someone having a wide, varied move set and to me it is an advantage because it makes the matches more unpredictable and gives far more opportunities for different spots, counters, finishes. It is about working smartly - the reason someone like Kevin Owens sucks is because he can't build a match and just throws big moves around without them having to make sense. Look at all the amazing 90s matches from AJPW and NJPW - the offence and variety/coolness of it was what made it stand out from so much staid US wrestling at that time.

Chris Hero over Inoue, Yokota or Chiggy is astonishing to me. They make wrestling seem so incredibly exciting, he makes wrestling so awfully dull. Or at least that was my impression up until late 2006 - I haven't knowingly sought after any of his work since then.

awkward style of worker? He was a star in NXT, not just in the midcard. Heck he was the highlight of the main event of Raw on the biggest Raw of the year. Great matches? vs Regal vs Cena vs Zayn all easily hit that mark. Awkward might be the wrong word - I meant all the European touches, the stiff uppercuts and such. Workers using that style in major league US wrestling tend to get a good rep. The main event of that Raw is a bad example, it was an underwhelming mess. Can't remember the other three matches, probably worth giving them a rewatch. I tend to hate modern WWE in ring though except for a few guys.

they sell the dvd on their website. That's how I saw it, actually ordered a dvd in 2015. Thanks. They have it in Blu Ray as well! Strange 'Shop' section on the site, two decades of events and they have only four DVDs for sale. Do they routinely tape stuff? I'm sure their matches used to show up on comps around 2004/2005. Still prefer inserting a disc into the player to loading up some stream. Feels more of a commitment somehow, I'm less likely to start flicking around.

Cesaro being still out there is pretty bemusing to me. I know people tend to like that awkward style of worker, but to me he has never gone beyond a solid midcard hand anywhere. His indie run was mediocre in comparison to his peers, and I can't think of any properly great matches he has had in WWE.

Is there a way to check out Low-Ki vs Rey Mysterio from the 19th Anniversary Show? Did JAPW release pro shot footage of it?

Low-Ki is helped by the fact that the majority of the voters will have seen his run. It seems that a good proportion of the user base was either around for the indie boom between 2000 and 2007 or is aware of it and has revisited it retrospectively. Ki is also massively helped by the fact he got to work Brian Danielson, Samoa Joe and just about every other top US worker of the past decade and a half, as well as a lot of Puro guys. I like him - he had an aura and presence in an era when a lot of indie workers were accomplished in ring but unable to project a character or sense of presence. I have a special nostalgia for that period so he made my list, although his final placing does seem a little high on here.

I kinda remembered it was brutal, but I forgot all of this ! To be fair there was a lot of antipathy between a lot of voters to begin with. Spidertwist vs Smarkschoice was a feud that had been going on for yeard beforehand, for reasons that escape me. That was in the days where wrestling websites, message boards and contributors could have 'feuds' online, seems madness now. There was a lot of hatred towards the way someone like Chris Coey reviewed wrestling, for instance, while spilled over into personal vendettas. Also, these forums were not just for wrestling discussion, so you had feuds popping up all over the place about all kinds of things in the way they seemed to when the internet/message boards/chat programs was still a relatively new thing to be available to all and not nearly so well regulated. That this board is ProWrestlingONLY has helped massively, since any debate/argument has been centered around wrestling itself rather than anything personal towards the posters. It seems most people on here only exist to each other as wrestling fans, obviously outside of the hardcores who know each other IRL. It is amusing looking back how slightly mental the internet used to be - at that point it was before mass social media so it was less an extension of real life and more an escape where people were more willing to act up and play characters. One board I was on saw people making up the death of a child for sympathy, posters being outed for trying to seduce girls on the board via private message, posters hacking emails of another boarder showing fetish porn subscriptions and posting them online, posters driving halfway across the country to have affairs with boarders in motel rooms, posters appearing in local newspapers sectioned under the Mental Health Act. All on a wrestling forum. Smarkschoice was an 'anything goes' board anyway in terms of content, so you had crazy Off Topic posters like Modest or Ghettoman interacting with wrestling academics in a Necro Butcher thread or something. This discussion has been far more worthwhile and interesting from a readers perspective.

No. It is a show on El Reye network.. using US and AAA talent. Probably the best wrestling show on television. They do record their shows in bulk, so they have taped things that won't air till next year it seems. Thanks. Is it, as the name suggests, a lucha venture, or just basically a US indie? Has it got much traction - is it on the level of, say, ROH? Do they focus mainly on good matches or are there also storylines? I'm fearful of derailing the thread too much, but could someone also give me a summary of the Jeff Jarrett venture? Do they run shows?

Can someone explain to me what Lucha Underground is? Is it something to do with that weird confusing promotion/highlights show Jeff Jarrett was fronting?

In my opinion it should be about the journey rather than the destination. If you have spent a dedicated two years analyzing and viewing wrestling of every style, it isn't necessarily a wasted effort even if the final list ends up skewed by people who got involved and put something together at the last minute. If the only purpose of your viewing was so we could finish with a definitive list it was a little pointless anyway, since it will always be subjective and you can never achieve mathematical certainty when ranking art. The purpose was surely your own journey and enjoyment rather than the idea that by watching and dissecting all this stuff there was going to be some scientific authority reflected in the final rundown that is suddenly tarnished by the fact Cactus Jack and Christian (ugh) might make the top hundred.

Depends if you are voting in ring or total package. I didn't vote for The Rock myself, but can see why someone would on the basis of aura, charisma, promo, entertainment, just someone you enjoyed watching. That is why someone like Rob Van Dam made my list over, say, Naoki Sano or Dynamite Kansai. RVD has glaring faults and is clearly the worse in ring worker in comparison, but some intangible factor about his personality and how he carries himself gets me far more invested in his matches. Even if since 2003 or so when he became bored and sanitized by WWE it has probably been me projecting the character of a cocky, arrogant, blase risk taker on him when he was going through the motions. I got a real kick out of heel RVD in 2001 - an good example of a heel that is edgy and cool as fuck and the fans will cheer over the babyface. His performance against Jeff Hardy at the Invasion PPV is probably the perfect star making big stage introduction, every little thing he does in that match is flawless.

The 2006 poll basically happened over 2-3 months, perhaps even less. So there wasn't any real emphasis on rewatching and reevaluating and getting introduced to new wrestling - people were basically voting on what they had seen already. There used to be polls about music, film etc every couple of months on Smarkschoice so it was just seen as an interesting exercise rather some major project, until it massively took off and people started asking the likes of Meltz to vote. Did Dave Prazak submit a list on SC? He definitely used to post on the board. On another random note, did Rob Naylor submit a vote for this? He was a pretty influential voice for a while.

I mean, this doesn't change the fact that Christian and The Undertaker are going to finish ahead of Jaguar Yokota and Kyoko Inoue. It doesn't bother me really, especially since I took next to no part in the discussion/nomination process. Complaints are just a natural part of discussion. Doesn't mean people are genuinely pissed off or that they consider the list of a failure. The nature of the rollout is that we will debate and criticise the merits of the placings. Anyway, I was the high vote on Matt Sydal and didn't list a single lucha worker, so I'll shut up.

Amazed Sting managed to work his way upwards in the past decade. Not as if any of his pimped stuff is obscure, and he certainly hasn't added to his case in the meantime. Especially galling when Jaguar Yokota drops about a hundred places to finish behind him. Shame, she has been involved in some of my absolute favorite matches of all time.

I love Sasuke, think he was top fifty on my ballot. Someone who had a lot of great junior matches during a golden era of junior wrestling. Amazed Christian will be so high, someone who I don't rate at all despite the heavy pimping that occurs for him in these parts. He always seemed so non threatening to me, with a poor look and no real star quality. His singles work was never more than solid to me, he could never get me to engage in him as worker outside of tags and multi man clusterfucks. Very much a solid midcard hand.

Surprised KENTA only got 40 votes, considering how prominent and consistently good he has been for so many years now. Very surprised he finished below Katsuhiko Nakajima also, as an easy comparison.

Beautiful writing. Although the Pet Shop Boys absolutely smoke Depeche Mode when it comes to melancholic 80s synth pop.

The ghost at the feast.

I like Dean Malenko. Cool, smooth, suave bastard with dozens of good matches. Maybe it was elevator wrestling to a certain extent but you know it can be pretty enjoyable to sit and watch a nicely worked match that doesn't challenge your perceptions. The yacht rock of wrestling or something.

My bad, came across like you being a dick, apologies. As you were. Edit: I stand by the fact people shouldn't just resort to just postings gifs or pictures like this is a Tumblr feed. It doesn't add anything to discussion and it rarely funny or interesting.

It isn't though. The whole ethos of this board has been about reasoned, well thought out discussion. Not posting gifs and pictures as a flippant, meaningless response like we're on Twitter or Vine or whatever. JVK shouldn't get a pass for such lazy, worthless posting just because he has written his fair share of bulky essays. It comes over as him being a patronising, elitist dick because he thinks his ridiculously mechanical way of ranking workers is worth far more than any of your reasoning and criteria. At least you talk about your picks with some passion and investment.

This. At his peak he is an incredibly fun big angry bad ass, but he still seems pretty high to me. Maybe my psyche is unduly influenced by the fact that when I started talking wrestling online he was derided as a laughing stock and the biggest waste of money in company history - even when he did some good work in 2003 a lot of IWC fans refused to even entertain the idea he was anything other than horrendous. Clearly the pendulum has swung completely now, understandably given the quality of some of his work in the interim. Still seems a bit weird to see him over Inoue or Sasaki or even Ibushi. Maybe I'm just out of touch, or underestimate how much people love modern WWE or a nasty big man. Still, Undertaker and fucking HHH are still to come it doesn't matter too much.